Did you know that in China, game console sales have been banned since the year 2000? While the law has not completely stopped the selling of game consoles in the country, according to a new report, China is currently looking into the ban and may reverse the law in the near future.

The report comes from Chinadaily who states that a government is currently reviewing the ban which was put in place to protect its citizens as it thought that video game consoles could impair the development of the youth in the country.

While the Xbox has not been allowed to have gone on sale, legally, this has not stopped vendors and individual from importing the console from regions that fall outside of this law. But officially, Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo are not selling their consoles in China.

If China does relax its stance on game consoles, this will likely have significant impact to Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo’s bottom line as one of the world’s largest economies would be open for business. Seeing that Microsoft has had a huge sales hit with its Xbox 360, we would be highly interested to see how Microsoft would fair selling its console in China.

It is worth noting that Microsoft has traditionally struggled in the Asia Pacific region, but, China is generally not a fan of Japan which is where the PS3 and Nintendo are headquartered.

You can bet that Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are watching this news closely because the minute that China would lift this ban, each company would need to be ready to pounce to attempt to take the largest piece of the marketshare pie.